dews, flowers, and exclamations, and have quarrelled with him for not applying his powers to some poem of length that should exhibit them in their proper light. The first of these faults however will most likely follow the other misdemeanours of his youth; and the latter he is understood to be doing away, at this moment, in a country retirement. Certainly the pernicious tendency of Mr. Moore's former productions is not to be questioned :-it was only to bẻ equalled perhaps by the good that might result from a change in his way of thinking, and from the pains he would take, when so altered, to transfer the attractiveness of his style to the cause of virtue. But there always appeared to me, in the midst of that taste of his, a cordial and redeeming something, -a leaning after the better affections, which shewed a conscious necessity of correcting it. Part with it altogether he need not as a writer, and could not as a poet; but to correct and unite it with nobler sympathies was his business as a true lover both of the sex and of his country. It would have been inconsistent in a politician so spirited, and a

patriot so warm as Mr. Moore, to assist in rendering us slaves in private, while he would have us all freemen in public.

2

The real admirers therefore of this poet were rejoiced to see in his latter publication, the Irish Melodies, how greatly he had improved his morality, and not only so, but how much the graces of his fancy had gained instead of lost by the improvement. In the sprightly and idiomatic flow of his songs he had already overtaken Prior, and on the ground of sentiment had left him behind; but the union of strong fancy and feeling discoverable in his later productions, and the unexpected appearance of a taste for the dignified and contemplative, so distinct from the town associations that crowded about one's ordinary idea of him, were promises of a still greater reputation, and will enable him, it is trusted, to reach posterity under an exemplary as well as graceful aspect.

to have attempted any improvement of the models

he found in vogue; but what he might do in this

respect may easily be conceived, from the natural fineness of his ear. The lines in his lyric pieces however have a music in them, distinct from the ordinary monotony of his contemporaries, and evidently traceable to his taste for the sister art. You feel at once, that his songs are indeed to be sung,-a happy propriety, which he seems to share exclusively with Dryden.

14 When, all of a sudden, there rose on the stairs A noise as of persons with singular airs ;

You'd have thought 'twas the Bishops or Judges a coming,

Or whole court of Aldermen hawing and humming,

Or Abbot, at least, with his ushers before,

But 'twas only Bob Southey and two or three more.

The last couplet originally stood thus,

Or at least my lord Colley with all his grand brothers; But 'twas only Bob Southey and three or four others.

Colley is one of the Christian names of the Marquis Wellesley. I notice this alteration, lest having felt myself bound to make it, I should seem to evade it's acknowledgment. There are still some points

about the Noble Marquis, which I may not particularly admire; but the policy he has lately pursued and avowed, the just appreciation he seems to have formed of the contest with Bonaparte, and the military genius displayed by his brother in the peninsula, are very far from warranting any contemptuous allusion to him or his family. There used to be certainly a feeling of distaste to them on account of their imputed haughtiness; nor did the Indian governorship, or their domestic politics, tend to diminish it; but the Marquis's present conduct seems to be rather independent than arrogant; and there is a well-tempered and strait-forward simplicity about the military character of the Field Marshal, worthy of the great cause to which his sword made an opening. The original line therefore, such as it is, stands against myself, and not against the noble brothers.

14 You'd have thought 'twas the Bishops or Judges a coming,

Or whole court of Aldermen, hawing and humming,

Or Abbot, at least, with his ushers before,

But 'twas only Bob Southey, and two or three more. This alludes to the affectation of universal superiority, of being best and wisest in whatever they felt, thought, and did,-which used to mark the Lake Poets in the days of their innocence, and has not forsaken them now that they are men of the world. It was then, however, a pardonable piece of boyishness and enthusiasm, at which good nature would smile;-now, it has become a full-grown and insolent pretension, which good sense must deride.

It is curious to see with what apparent unconsciousness this change has been affected. The best feature in their character, till of late years, was their public as well as private integrity; but the maudlin German cant which first infected their muse at last corrupted their manners, and being a jargon adapted to every sort of extreme, enabled them to change their free opinions for slavish ones, without altering the cast of their language. Good opinion still lingered about some of them; but latterly the very